Amazon, Tesla, Meta Considered Harmful To Democracy (theregister.com) 104
Amazon, Meta, and Tesla were named by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) as some of the worst corporate underminers of democracy . These companies were accused of union busting, monopolizing media and technology, violating human rights, contributing to climate change, and fostering political movements that threaten democratic institutions. The full list of "corporate underminers of democracy for 2024" is Amazon, Blackstone Group, ExxonMobil, Glencore, Meta, Tesla and the Vanguard Group. The Register reports: The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) today published a list of seven companies it said were "emblematic" of the ways large international corporations have begun tossing their weight around to influence global affairs. Those businesses, ITUC noted, violate trade union and alleged human rights, monopolize media and technology, exacerbate the climate catastrophe and try to privatize public services in a way that "protects and expands [their] own profits by undermining democracy." "These companies deploy complex lobbying operations to undermine popular will and disrupt existing or nascent global policy that could hold them accountable," ITUC wrote. The desire for greater corporate power, the Confederation added, invariably puts corporate interests in bed with anti-democratic political movements like the modern far-right. Right-wing politicians, ITUC noted, tend to lower taxes, undercut higher wages for workers, crack down on trade unions, and the like - all things sure to please the likes of corporations like Amazon, Tesla, and Meta as evidenced by plenty of prior reporting and research. For Amazon, the ITUC criticized the company for becoming "notorious for its union busting and low wages, monopoly in e-commerce, egregious carbon emissions through its AWS [datacenters], corporate tax evasion and lobbying."
Meta was accused of exploiting user data, undermining privacy laws, manipulating global information, and failing to regulate harmful content on its platforms. "Meta's algorithms can quite literally alter humanity's perceptions of reality," ITUC said. "Its revenue model exploits trillions of personalized data points to deliver highly effective advertising." Some have referred to the company as "a foreign state, populated by people without sovereignty, ruled by a leader with absolute power."
As for Tesla, it was condemned for poor labor practices, anti-union politics, unsafe working conditions, human rights violations, and environmental damage in its supply chain. "The world's most highly-valued automaker has quickly become known as one of its most belligerent employers. Tesla's rapid market success has been outpaced only by the descent of its corporate leaders into anti-democratic, anti-union politics."
Meta was accused of exploiting user data, undermining privacy laws, manipulating global information, and failing to regulate harmful content on its platforms. "Meta's algorithms can quite literally alter humanity's perceptions of reality," ITUC said. "Its revenue model exploits trillions of personalized data points to deliver highly effective advertising." Some have referred to the company as "a foreign state, populated by people without sovereignty, ruled by a leader with absolute power."
As for Tesla, it was condemned for poor labor practices, anti-union politics, unsafe working conditions, human rights violations, and environmental damage in its supply chain. "The world's most highly-valued automaker has quickly become known as one of its most belligerent employers. Tesla's rapid market success has been outpaced only by the descent of its corporate leaders into anti-democratic, anti-union politics."
Oy (Score:2, Insightful)
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"Things that I don't like" does not equal "enemies of democracy".
Can we get that in writing, specifically about Trump?
Oh. I see. When it comes to him, all logic goes out the window, and the Thing They Hate The Most is literally Hitler, and a Threat to Democracy that Must Be Stopped.
Please, do carry on.
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Re:Oy (Score:4, Interesting)
"Things that I don't like" does not equal "enemies of democracy".
Can we get that in writing, specifically about Trump?
What we have in writing about Trump, among other things like criminal indictments, is that his name appears more than 300 times as the critical implementer in the Project 2025 manifesto. And yes that does qualify him has an enemy of democracy.
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You tried that already.
Your attempts to get him murdered failed every time.
Learn to grow the fuck up child.
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"Not that I endorse him that much but sometimes the less harm is the best."
You'll endorse who you're paid to endorse.
Hit piece by unions against non-union companies (Score:2)
Hard to take these seriously given that the International Trade Union Confederation represent union workers and they are criticizing companies which are anti-union.
Getting it published in a third-party news web site does not change the political motivations of the piece.
Not pro / against unions, just want a truth in editorialization at these news sites instead of burying the 'written by unions' nature of the article for the reader to guess at, to put it front and center in the headline and lead in paragraph
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Re:Oy (Score:5, Insightful)
Newsflash for you: even in the USA, being a communist or holding communist beliefs is not illegal, nor is it "traitorous". It's just one of the many political positions/beliefs possible in a pluralist democracy. And there's nothing at all wrong with the notion that a nation should look out for the welfare of everyone, not just a handful of billionaires.
You know what is traitorous?
The failed Jan 6 2021 insurrection attempt, and supporting those who engaged in it or encouraged it.
And, of course, Confederate flags - that's the flag of traitors who waged war against the United States. Just like the Jan 6 traitors attempted so ineptly.
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Newsflash for you: even in the USA, being a communist or holding communist beliefs is not illegal, nor is it "traitorous"
Says the millennial who has never even heard of Mccarthyism.
Here's a clue: many people's lives were destroyed by (often false) accusations of communist sympathies.
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Yes, McCarthyism was evil. There's no doubt about that.
But being a communist or holding communist beliefs was never actually illegal. Eisenhower's unconstitutional Communist Control Act of 1954 outlawed the Communist Party of the United States and essentially criminalised *membership* of the Communist Party but there were way too many ordinary Americans - from workers to the bourgeoisie and even amongst the ultra-rich who we'd call the 0.01% these days - who held communist beliefs to criminalise them all.
M
Re:Oy (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oy (Score:4, Insightful)
Obviously, it's even better to eliminate every shared thing. Then if you want justice, you get your own police and your own judges, not any commie tax-payer funded ones. We could call this feudalism, a true utopia of all the freedom you can afford.
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Free capitalism is economic democracy.
We speak about freedoms in capitalism, when standing around talking about the mega-corps of mega-corps that have grown to elite status by swallowing up a lot of that “free” market.
And just think, they’re Too Big To Fail capitalism or democracy now..
Re: Oy (Score:2)
If that's true there should be many examples of democracies without free market economies. Can you name any?
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If that's true there should be many examples of democracies without free market economies. Can you name any?
A totally free market would be corpo feudalistic fiefdom. The more democratic a state is, the more heavily regulated its market will be. People generally don't like being ruled by oligarchs, so will vote to reign them in to the extent they are able. Oligarchs counter by trying to capture and corrupt as much of the state as they can to get candidates that pay lip service to populism, but actually serve the rich and their corporations. They will also try to install their cronies into the state bureaucraci
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Capitalism is very much tied to democracy. A robust democracy often does things the capitalist class doesn't like, and the capitalist class is willing to pay to mitigate this. Not sure how you can separate the two so easily
What you describe isn't Capitalism... It's Cronyism. Subtle difference.
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Capitalism is very much tied to democracy. A robust democracy often does things the capitalist class doesn't like, and the capitalist class is willing to pay to mitigate this. Not sure how you can separate the two so easily
What you describe isn't Capitalism... It's Cronyism. Subtle difference.
I started to write a reply and then realised the GP might be being sarcastic... as he pretty much described the opposite of democracy.
A robust democracy tends to curb the excesses of capitalism (as a robust democracy tends to do to other things that can be taken to extremes), excesses that we tend to see writ large under totalitarianism.
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Capitalism is a retronym created to describe the free exchange of goods and services between private citizens and the investment of private accumulations of wealth into starting businesses to provide goods and services. The term "captalism" was created to describe this system after the fact as the antithesis of the new theory of communism.
The only reason that capitalism is "tied" to democracy is because both are forms of freedom, within the economic and political spheres.
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This is pure BS at very basic levels and I'm ashamed that slashdotters have upvoted it so much.
First, there is no "Capitalist Class". That's not how classes work. If you're trying to say, "the rich," then you should just say that because THE MAJORITY of low-income Americans are absolutely capitalist and DO NOT pay to mitigate the robust actions of their democracy.
Second, capitalism is an economic system focusing on a free-market economy driven by profit. Democracy is a political system focused on ensuring t
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Corporate tax evasion: THIS is a threat to democracy.
There's a difference between tax evasion (illegal) and tax avoidance (legal) using laws passed by our democratically elected representatives.
BRIBING is illegal, bad, and a threat to democracy.
Bribing is illegal in many countries. In America, it is not.
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"There's a difference between tax evasion (illegal) and tax avoidance (legal) "
Yup. The difference is the subjective view of the state on your actions. If the state opposes your actions they are free to interpret them as tax evasion rather than tax avoidance. There is also no obligation to apply a uniform standard and even if there were, real life is complicated and it isn't hard to nitpick a distinction or two if you wish.
"Bribing is illegal in many countries. In America, it is not."
It is illegal, the laws
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"Things that I don't like" does not equal "enemies of democracy".
Well, according to the International Trade Union Confederation, only things that are good for the International Trade Union Confederation are good for democracy. I wonder how far down the list one has to go to get to Putin, Hamas or the like.
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Re: Oy (Score:2, Interesting)
Unions are democratic because they represent the people who work there.
So why is it that you're never allowed to opt out of collective bargaining agreements and bargain on your own? I've always done very well at that. The median CWA union worker with double my experience makes less than half what I get paid, and their benefits suck compared to what I get. If they're supposed to be there for you, then why deny you the choice?
China calls themselves a democracy too.
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Unions are democratic because they represent the people who work there.
So why is it that you're never allowed to opt out of collective bargaining agreements and bargain on your own? I've always done very well at that.
Why am I not allowed to opt out of paying taxes in the state I live in? It's part of the deal when you sign up to work there. "Right to work" folks love saying "if you don't like the boss or his policies find another job!" Well, if you don't like working in a union shop, find another one.
Also, the whole point of collective bargaining is that it is not about how good you are at bargaining specifically, it is about everyone in aggregate. Union workers make an average of 17-18% more than non-union. That's
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Or maybe things that are good for their members.
Amazon and Tesla are notorious for being shitty employers, for example. It is well documented at this point. Their lobbying and attempts to influence elected representatives are undemocratic. Remember that the US is not typical - most countries consider people with deep pockets bribing politicians to be a bad thing, because democracy requires them to represent all their constituents.
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Only Funny comment, but it appears to be a censor mod? But the insight I was looking for would have been lying ads as the basis for a failing economic system, not just the failure of democracy predicated on the "wisdom of crowds" using true data.
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Sees you are propaganda-pushing, anti-democratic scum yourself. Well done.
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At this point they just consider democracy to be equivalent to democrats. They've even included opposing unions and not being green enough.
Re: Oy (Score:1)
Re: Oy (Score:2)
I've never seen a union actually do that.
Re: Oy (Score:1)
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I can only speak about Tesla, Amazon and Meta, all of which I have interacted with.
Shortly put:
- Amazon is a champion of misleading; Dark patterns, screwing its own sellers, allowing anyone who pays to sell products on its platform, damn their quality standards. It's been increasingly difficult to figure out which products are worth buying, to the point where I'm way better off just buying them from Aliexpress, Temu, Shein and the like. In a nutshell, my Amazon experience has been, for years, way worse than
Re:Oy (Score:4, Insightful)
In social democracies like ours, our last line of defence is trade unions. We should be supporting them rather than giving into the FUD & smear campaigns against them that began in the 1980s with Reagan & Thatcher.
You might be surprised to find out that trade unions are perceived very differently on other countries & are positive influences on how businesses are run.
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Since when are unions key to democracy? (Score:3)
I agree that supposed information brokers like Meta (and, oddly missing here, Alphabet/Google) are threats to democracy, as they can influence peoples knowledge and opinions, but unions don't fit the bill. Companies are not democratic institutions by default. They can, and often do have some form of democracy, namely in having a board of directors, shareholders, etc., but it's certainly not an inherent part.
Re:Since when are unions key to democracy? (Score:4, Interesting)
The idea that unions are key to democracy does exist, and does goes back. I read it in the future-fiction book "Rise of the Meritocracy" (1958), the book which invented the term 'meritocracy'. The book started from the fact that meaningful UK parliament came about to represent the opposing forces between working class and ruling class, and each side needed representatives at the table. (In the book's fiction part, unions disintegrated due to better education and streaming, and parliament became kind of pointless, like the UK monarchy).
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Kinda.
The bit I read (not related to future-fiction) was that meritocracy was imported to the UK by observing Confucianism (the testing of bureaucrats to obtain government positions).
The problem being testing tends to stifle innovation by keeping new ideas/people (both good and bad) out and is easily abused to form oligopolies as testing can be gamed to keep certain classes of people out (all witnessed in China until the practice was abolished). Strangely the notion of meritocracy is en vogue with a certain
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Right. In my first job, I had no choice but to join a union if I wanted to work for a specific employer. I had to pay them every paycheck without a choice, and pretty much lost all of my individual negotiation rights.
Before my time, when a union would strike, they would often trash the property of those who were not a part of the union and continued to work. Or, they would trash temps who would work in their place while striking.
That's not democracy. Their more similar to an evil communism than any kind of
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A better way to describe larger corporations is that they borrow their organization from the miliary, with a general at the head and a descending tree of officers of various specializations and functional divisions. This structure is natural to allow a singular vision and goal to be followed from the top down. And as to 'profit', well that's complicated and usually a matter of ownership, but almost always employees are paid wages and benefits and never ownership or profit sharing unless the company owners
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It's also worth noting that in the modern age most companies no longer distribute their profits to their shareholders. It is commonly understood that the best thing for everyone [owners AND employees] is for the company to invest all profits into expansion. The wealth is just 'on paper' until stock is sold/traded/or borrowed against and the money the owners get doesn't actually come from the company.
This is why it is generally a bad idea to tax corporations. That is taking away the money the company uses to
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Employee rights should be set by employment law, ie the government, and not individual per company. Most of the western world outside the US realised this decades ago.
But even employee rights don't equate to democracy - a company is controlled by its owners, within the scope of law. If the union wants employees to have a democratic say in the running of a company, then it should buy shares in that company and vote at the AGM.
The unions here are butt hurt because they have no control over the companies inv
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You use the term democracy as in the ability to vote for your country / state / local government. Democracy is bigger than that, it enshrines the concepts of all governments, down to voting for your HoA, or indeed a representative of a labour collective. The whole concept of union and union participation is democratic. Amazon is directly interfering with people's right to free association with their union busting work. In this case the union isn't part of democracy, it's evidence that people are freely able
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I agree that supposed information brokers like Meta (and, oddly missing here, Alphabet/Google) are threats to democracy, as they can influence peoples knowledge and opinions, but unions don't fit the bill. Companies are not democratic institutions by default. They can, and often do have some form of democracy, namely in having a board of directors, shareholders, etc., but it's certainly not an inherent part.
Because unions are the only reason we have rights at work.
Don't thank god for the weekend, that MFer wanted you to slave for 6 days and prostrate for the other, if you like your 2 days off at the end of the week, thank a union.
You're probably far too young to remember a time where companies effectively owned workers, you got paid little, worked in squalid, unsafe conditions for 12 hours or more for six days a week. There are still countries where that is the norm, you'll notice they didn't go through
Harmful to democracy? (Score:1)
Is this the new âoeracistâ slur?
Re: Communists hate what they don't control (Score:2)
And this country won't learn that lesson until they actually go through the process
Nah, most of us saw it happen countries times and long ago realized it won't work. The ones who tell you with a straight face that it has never been tried before and/or it will really work this time call themselves "progressive". Basically they have it in their heads what the world is supposed to look like to the exclusion of all others, and only their ideas are the right path for humanity. Only theirs can possibly be "forward" or "progress". Basically the same thing fascists, prohibitionists, and eugenicis
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And where are there any "Marxist true believers" in the story? Oh, right, there are not. Looks like you are part of the problem.
Send in the Helldrivers (Score:2, Offtopic)
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helldivers....stupid autocucumber....
*sigh*
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Damn! I was thinking there was some new Anime I hadn't managed to hear about yet. Helldrivers sounds awesome. And from the title, you can already start to wonder, "Do they actually drive hell, or is this just a plucky story about Lucifer's chauffers?"
Make defamation lawsuits easier & wider (Score:4, Insightful)
Real solutions to these kinds of things are hard to come by in America, largely due to 1st Amendment. However, there is one angle that tends to go over easier with Americans: lawsuits.
Pass laws that make it easier for citizens to sue for defamation, trauma, and hardship if social media platforms allow BS through that targets them. While it's not expected Big Social can monitor everything, something with say 10,000 views that's bad-mouthing an ordinary citizen would qualify. They can certainly monitor "popular" messages.
And also allow politicians to sue for defamation, similar to the UK. Maybe there should be an upper limit, but make it big enough to feel a sting. If they allow lies about politicians to spread, then hold them accountable.
America: Freedom To Sue Liars.
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Hah, you do realize we live in a country in which every company in existences forces their customers to use arbitration instead of lawsuits, right? Even if that means that a Disney+ customer can't sue Disney when his wife dies in a Disney theme park.
Of course, other countries have governments and laws that actually attempt to respect their citizens. Here, we respect the exploitation of citizens.
Tesla? (Score:2)
Why is Tesla on the list? Is a car company. How is the entire company that is trying to combat global warming and move to a sustainable future a threat to democracy?
Or are they just talking about its CEO and tarring the entire company for him?
If they hate Musk, X is a more appropriate thing to list. But Tesla?!
Re:Tesla? (Score:5, Informative)
https://www.ituc-csi.org/tesla... [ituc-csi.org]
Their claims against Tesla summarize to anti-union politics, preferring bad-actor mining partners, and Musk's politics expressed through the corporations he controls.
Re: Tesla? (Score:2, Interesting)
Hard to see what negative politics Tesla, Space X, Neurolink displays. As for X, Elon supports free speech. I guess that is the real threat to democracy?
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Elon Musk does not support free speech. He supports the speech of fascists and suppresses the speech of anyone else.
X-chan is an abomination. It sucked when it was still Twitter even long before he bought it, but it sucks far more now.
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As for X, Elon supports free speech. I guess that is the real threat to democracy?
I see it with my naked eye, how X is loading me day after day those MAGA, pro-ruZZian, anti-Israel posts lately, even though I marked them, each, irrelevant individually already two-three times the days before. It is propaganda flood, one could only struggle to avoid. Elections pressing! That's why this defect is so real and graspable now. What a disgrace of former Twitter, gotten into the hands of manipulating new owners, ruZZian tycoons included!
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Its absolutely a propaganda flood. But so is every media. The freedom of speech applies to everyone. Even the MAGA and the Ruzzians. But then you can reply to them or mute them. I block a lot of that sh17.
The former owners were a lot worse, as the Twitter files clearly showed. They would ban any true statement if they didn't like it.
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https://www.ituc-csi.org/tesla... [ituc-csi.org]
Their claims against Tesla summarize to anti-union politics,
Politics? Try quasi-legal union busting, at least according to accusations. But that has little to do with being harmful to democracy.
After all, unions are *also* harmful to democracy. They're a bad workaround for a broken system of government that is failing to adequately protect worker safety (by OSHA aggressively prosecuting companies that don't meet safety standards), failing to drive growth in wages over time (by raising the minimum wage regularly and in a manner that keeps up with inflation), faili
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How is the entire company that is trying to combat global warming and move to a sustainable future a threat to democracy?
It's not. The story is about more than the two things you cherry picked out from the list of grievances in TFS.
Well (Score:3)
Well I don't see democracies doing much to curb this. A lot of talk and pointing fingers but the fuckery continues.
There's a reason I call Meta as (Score:2)
... Meta[stasize].
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How was overturning Roe anti democratic? The ruling was that it was up to the states to decide.
I suppose you could argue that was antidemocratic because an unelected group of judges passed the ruling, but that was also the case with the initial ruling too.
As first post said:
"Things that I don't like" does not equal "enemies of democracy".
In democracy its not we all get to do what we want, its that we elect representatives that pass laws that control what people can do, even with their own bodies.
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How was overturning Roe anti democratic?
Well it did remove a freedom, transferring it from "up to each person to decide" to "up to each state to tell the people what to do".
As to not being democratic, it isn't democratic because the population didn't vote on it, which of course is how courts work. In a democracy people vote directly on which laws to pass, unlike in a republic where representatives do instead.
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The ruling was that it was up to the states to decide.
Yes, up until the point where they get around to making it illegal at the federal level.
I'm just here to watch (Score:2, Insightful)
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all the slashdotters eat each other in the comments.
I used to find entertainment in YouTube comments. Until it oddly became this place where everyone makes the same lame joke about how [actor x] in some clip is ironically different because [cultural reference/quote from completely different movie role], resulting in a knee-slapper only a Dad could love.
In 10 years, the comments section will be grasped about as well as GenZ listening to a Dennis Miller rant.
Left out Vanguard group and other enablers.. (Score:1)
After a judge denied Musk a $56 billion pay package calling it unfair...
In June, Vanguard cast a pivotal shareholder vote at Tesla in favour of approving an egregious US$56 billion pay package for Elon Musk, one of the worlds most prominent anti-democratic CEOs. Making matters worse, it uses shadowy Donor Advised Funds to allow investors to funnel funding to far-right, anti-democratic organisations that promote Islamophobia, intolerance of LGBTQ+ workers, white supremacy, and more.
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I didn't vote for the Tesla compensation along with hundreds of thousands of other union and independent stock holders of Vanguard representing hundreds of billions of $. However, Vanguard lumped the votes into non-democratic representation of stock holder approval, usurping the stock holders intentions.
Nobody but sociopaths wants to leon M. Read the article.
https://www.ituc-csi.org/the-v... [ituc-csi.org]
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Guess I'm not helping the issue (Score:2)
We’re too far gone (Score:1)
Fascinating (Score:2)
So many comments demonstrating *exactly* what the charge is alleging. Brainwashed neofascists attacking the facts...